Borderlands: Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution

I love Borderlands. I love throwing down Scorpio Turrets. I kill Bonehead whenever I boot up the game just because he was my first real hurdle, and now I can one-shot him. I have the first three pieces of DLC, and I love them all for what they are (I wish Moxxi’s Underdome awarded XP and/or weapon proficiency, but the endless waves of enemies are still fun to mow through). I’ve butchered zombies, fought the hordes, and bested General Knoxx (Crawmerax eludes me, but I’ll get him some day). Now though, I have the seminal DLC pack, Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution. I’m a fan of the claptrap robots. I think they’re hysterical. My wife and I regularly say to one another “Check me out, I’m dancing! I’m dancing!” This content was made for me, and I could not be happier with it.

CNRR exudes everything that Borderlands is – ridiculous weapons, ridiculous enemies, nonsensical story that makes you smile, and pure unadulterated fun. After three expansion packs, the folks at Gearbox know what they’re doing. Gone are the multi-tiered fetch quests that are most likely collected at the end of the story arc, gone are the enemies that don’t shoot (but still drop guns somehow), gone are the notions of “you don’t need XP” and “you don’t need weapon proficiency increases,” and gone is the straight-line map layout that plagued Knoxx. CNRR takes Knoxx, the best bit of DLC before CNRR came along, and iterated on all the good parts. There are new weapons, new enemies, new versions of old enemies, and eight new levels to attain regardless of whether you bought Knoxx (this is actually a patch feature so everyone has access, but most folks, including me, will associate the patch with the new DLC), and more importantly than anything else it’s a lot of fun and a great excuse to go back to Pandora.

CNRR is fairly short – the main quest line can be completed in around four hours – and the enemies are almost all vulnerable to caustic damage since they’re robots (or half-robotic in nature), but there is plenty else to do. The side quests are numerous and funny (or it may just be that I am immature), the enemies are varied and interesting, and the Claptraps are even funnier here than they were in either the base game or the other pieces of DLC. If you’re only going to pick up one piece of Borderlands DLC it should be The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, but if you’ve got the money for one after that it really ought to be Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution.

Pros: Great humor, fun new enemy types, great twists on old enemy types